Durham's Mark Stoneman and Phil Mustard too hot for Nottinghamshire

Michael Lumb of Nottinghamshire hits past Durham's Will Smith en route to his second-innings 123, a score which had looked to be a match-saving total. Photograph: Clive Mason/Getty Images

There was a time where this game would have been unloseable for Nottinghamshire, where a target of 181 in 23 overs, as faced Durham after tea on the final day, would have resulted in a bit of red ink in the scorebook for a couple of batsmen to bump up the averages, and an early departure. This is a different era though, one where the influence of T20 has convinced players that what once seemed impossible is not even improbable any more.

So instead of the draw that was the apparent outcome once Nottinghamshire had managed to prolong their second innings through two sessions of the final day, Durham obliterated the target, winning at a gallop by six wickets. Against a side who contained four international bowlers in Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, Samit Patel and Ajmal Shahzad, that represented handing out a humiliation.

Appropriately, it was Gareth Breese who caressed the winning runs to the point boundary with 16 balls to spare. Breeze is indeed what it had been once Mark Stoneman and Phil Mustard clobbered and bludgeoned out an opening stand of 125 inside a dozen overs. Stoneman reached a half-century from 24 balls and 69 in total from 38, with eight fours and two sixes, before he clipped a full toss to deep square-leg. Mustard made 72 from 54 balls, with seven fours and two sixes, and saw his team to within four runs before he chipped gently to mid-on. It is hard to believe that it had all been so simple.

Sitting on the periphery it is easy enough to pick holes in Nottinghamshire's defence of the target. Players now are adept at manoeuvring the ball around a field with an array of increasingly exotic strokes. But aside from a few reverse sweeps against the spin of Swann and Patel, there was little more complicated than a series of biffing drives, cuts and pulls.

Yet this variation tells a tale. It surely remains fundamental that you cannot hope to defend all parts of the ground.

Instead, a bowler has to try to make batsmen hit into restricted areas, something that is not so easy if different lengths and widths are bowled. Split fields simply cannot work. Once Luke Fletcher conceded 25 from two overs with the new ball and Shahzad 19 from his only over, the chase was up and running, a feeling of Nottinghamshire panic had already set in, and the game was there for the taking.

It had all seemed so unlikely as Nottinghamshire's doughty rearguard second-innings batting, in lasting until tea, provided them with what they must have believed was a safe haven. There was nothing left in the pitch for the seamers and as there was considerable turn for the wrist spin of Scott Borthwick, and Breese with his offspin, they ought to have been able to put more pressure on the batsmen.

Borthwick seems unable to apply this consistently through an over, a single predictable bad delivery undoing the good work: batsmen can sit back and wait, and four runs per over is too many on a dusting fourth-day surface.

This is to take nothing away from Michael Lumb, who played excellently for his 123, nor Swann for a battling 57 that appeared to have sealed the fate of the game.